Seventeen hostages held in the Gaza Strip for weeks were released Saturday evening after a long wait due to last-minute complications, on the second day of a truce between Hamas and Israel which released in exchange 39 Palestinian prisoners.
This truce, the result of an agreement concluded under the aegis of Qatar, offered a new day of respite to the inhabitants of the besieged territory after seven weeks of war, triggered by a bloody Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7. Israeli bombings have stopped since Friday morning, as have the Islamist movement’s rocket attacks on Israel.
The Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist movement, released a video showing the 13 Israeli and four Thai hostages getting into International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) vehicles shortly before midnight. A young woman, with a bandaged ankle and walking on crutches, was laid down on a stretcher in one of the vehicles.
The convoy then crossed into Egypt through the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, and the hostages were then taken to Israel.
Among the hostages returned to Israel is Maya Regev, 21, kidnapped with her 18-year-old brother as they tried to flee the Tribe of Nova music festival attacked by Hamas fighters at dawn on October 7. A video posted on social media showed the young woman and her brother tied up in the back of a van.
“I’m very happy that Maya is about to join us. Nevertheless, I am heartbroken because my son Itay is still a prisoner of Hamas in Gaza,” his mother Mirit said in a statement released by the Hostage Families Forum.
In total, 270 people were killed by Hamas during the Tribe of Nova attack, which became one of the symbols of the massacre in Israel. Maya Regev is the first participant kidnapped during this festival to be released.
A 9-year-old Israeli-Irish girl, Emily, is also part of the group of 17 people released, announced Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, referring to “a day of immense joy and relief”.
” No words ”
“We cannot find the words to describe our emotions after 50 difficult and complicated days,” rejoiced Thomas Hand, Emily’s father, in a press release. “We are delighted to have Emily back, but at the same time we remember […] of all the hostages who have not yet returned home.
Four German-Israelis are also part of the group that returned to Israel on Saturday, said the head of German diplomacy Annalena Baerbock, expressing her “relief”. Four other German-Israelis had already been released on Friday.
The 17 people released “underwent an initial medical assessment,” the Israeli army said in a statement. One of them was hospitalized, and the others had to be reunited with their families, she said.
In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered on Saturday evening in Hostages Square. “Get them out of hell,” one banner read.
The release of this second group of hostages was delayed for several hours on Saturday due to a dispute between Hamas and Israel over compliance with the agreement, but the Qatari government eventually announced that the obstacles had been removed.
Celebrations in the West Bank
Late in the evening, Israel announced that it had released a second group of 39 Palestinian prisoners, all women and young people under the age of 19.
In the occupied West Bank, convoys of cars topped with flags of the various Palestinian movements, led by Hamas, paraded through the streets, escorting a Red Cross bus carrying the released prisoners.
PHOTO AMIT ELKAYAM, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Protesters in Tel Aviv demanding the release of all hostages.
In East Jerusalem, celebrations were more discreet. Helmeted and armed members of the Israeli security forces were particularly numerous in the house of Israa Jaabis, 39, the most famous prisoner on the list.
His photo, raising his atrophied fingers, his face partly burned, in an Israeli court, is regularly brandished in demonstrations or to illustrate the suffering of Palestinian prisoners.
“I am ashamed to speak of rejoicing when all of Palestine is hurt,” she told journalists in the family living room in her Jabal Moukkaber neighborhood, alongside her 13-year-old son Moatassem. “They must release everyone,” she further pleaded.
Mme Jaabis was sentenced to 11 years in prison for detonating a gas canister she was carrying in the trunk of her car at a roadblock in 2015, injuring a police officer.
Also in the West Bank, six Palestinians were killed on Saturday in several incidents with the Israeli army, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Since October 7, some 230 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers or settlers.
Nearly 250 trucks in Gaza
PHOTO ABED SABAH, REUTERS
Palestinians walk past houses damaged by Israeli strikes during the conflict in the northern Gas Strip.
The agreement between Hamas and Israel, also concluded with the support of the United States and Egypt, provides for four days of truce which should allow the release of 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners.
On Friday, the first 13 Israeli hostages, women and children, were released by Hamas, which also released ten Thais and a Filipino who were not part of the agreement. In return, Israel released a first group of 39 Palestinian detainees.
This pause, renewable, also includes the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel into Gaza, subject to a total siege by Israel since October 7. These cargoes, whose entry from Egypt is subject to the Israeli green light, have been arriving in recent weeks in dribs and drabs.
PHOTO AHMAD GHARABLI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation, amid fireworks, Palestinian flags and various movements including the green banner of Hamas, accompanied the return of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel.
A total of 248 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday, 61 of which delivered water, food and medical equipment to the north of the territory, according to the UN.
The Israeli army considers the northern third of the Gaza Strip a combat zone. She ordered the population to leave and prevents anyone from returning.
Despite this warning, thousands of displaced Gazans took advantage of the break in fighting to try to return home to the north. And according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, seven of these people were injured on Saturday by Israeli fire.
“Huge pressure”
According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed during the Hamas attack on October 7, and 240 people were taken hostage.
PHOTO AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The Indonesian hospital located on the outskirts of the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
In retaliation, Israel promised to “eliminate” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, relentlessly bombing the Palestinian territory and launching a ground offensive on October 27, until the truce. .
In Gaza, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children and young people under the age of 18, were killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas government.
Israeli army chief of staff General Herzi Halevi has warned that the war is not over. “We will resume attacking Gaza as soon as the truce ends […] to dismantle Hamas and create enormous pressure to bring back as many hostages as possible, every last one of them, as quickly as possible,” he said.
Hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip continued on Saturday to receive many wounded evacuated from the north. But according to Ashraf al-Qidreh, spokesperson for the Hamas Ministry of Health, “they no longer have the reception capacity or the equipment” to deal with this influx.
More than half of the territory’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN, and 1.7 million people have been displaced, out of 2.4 million inhabitants.